notbecauseofvictories:

the thing about shakespeare is that when it’s done right, when it’s done well, it should sound like it’s coming from the soles of your shoes, being dredged up from the dark places in your lungs and exhaled in a rush, before it burns your mouth. There are pauses, swallows, reverberations, inflections, because how else are you to laugh and sing and snarl and spill forth these lines?

shakespeare done well by actors who know what they’re doing stops sounding like shakespeare. It slips inside your blood, inflects you brain, raging through your system until this is the only language you have ever known, will ever need. It makes the theater the world entire.

shakespeare should sound like lightning; it should turn the air silver.

and once you’ve witnessed that, it’s hard to accept anything less.